How to spell adviser

advice giver • delegator • visionary • innovator • sustainer • empowerer • respecter

By Jeff Salisbury Writing a speech is like writing an article. As individuals think about the subject, they develop perspectives. For Jeff Salisbury, writing a speech for the Advisers Conference of the Michigan Association of Student Councils nudged him to review his role as adviser. With 20 years as newspaper adviser, 16 years as yearbook adviser, four years as literary magazine adviser and 12 years as student council adviser, he learned that adviser spells both lofty expectations and endless challenges.

What does the word spell for you?

22 • Communication: Journalism Education Today

Fall 2005

American essayist, 1803-1882

advice-giver “Diagnose before you prescribe.”

The only way to be an adviser is to be an “advice-giver,” not an “advice-doer.” In the work-a-day world of education, it is easy to become a human-doer instead of a human being. Simply be. And that turns out to mean be in the classroom. Be in the organization. Do not be the organization.

Leadership authority Stephen Covey, recognized by Time magazine in 1996 as one of the 25 most influential Americans, says that we listen autobiographically. That is, we tend to respond naturally to others in one of four ways. We evaluate by either agreeing or disagreeing. We probe by asking questions from our own frame of reference. We advise by giving counsel based upon our own unique set of life experiences, and we interpret by trying to figure out people and their motives and behaviors, based usually on our own motives and behaviors.

Advisers might think of themselves as “doctors” who first take a history and physical of their patients by seeking answers to questions before prescribing a course of treatment and/or medication.

Covey also provides other examples of this fundamental “law.” He points out that an engineer would never design a bridge without identifying the forces and stresses the span might have to undergo. The implications are clear.

• Good teachers will never begin teaching a subject before assessing the students.

• Good students will never try to apply something they have learned before they fully understand its application.

• Good parents will try to understand their children before evaluating and judging them.

Fall 2005

Understanding is the key to exercising good judgment. However, there is an important caution.

Advisers who judge first and then simply do the work themselves are demonstrating a lack of understanding of their role as “counselors.”

delegator “I’m not gonna try it. You try it.

An adviser is someone who guides journalism students to achieve more than they think they can. An adviser is someone who helps journalism students find not only their inner voices but also their inner selves. An adviser is someone who encourages journalism students to develop confidence in their abilities, faith in themselves, an unquenchable thirst for truth and knowledge and a determination to help others better understand themselves and the world in which they live.

Jack Harkrider Anderson High School (Austin, Texas) harkthewriter@hotmail.com

Hey! I know! Let’s get Mikey to try it.”

The best advisers believe strongly in the process of delegation, and they stress its importance to the success of the organization. In this way, editors and editors-to-be learn to think creatively about ways to accomplish their tasks. In addition, “delegation” reminds everyone on the staff of individual responsibility to the overall success of the publication or organization.

Throughout the year, the best advisers encourage both editors and new staff members to ask for clarification of their responsibilities when needed and to contribute their own ideas. Consider posting the lists of delegation assignments, and, when necessary, allow members to trade or negotiate task responsibilities if appropriate.

All approved changes in task responsibility should be recorded on the posted lists, and each editor should record changes on his or her lists.

Occasionally it is good for the staff to brainstorm about how to improve the communication and how to strengthen the publication process. Editors may discuss the ideas at an editorial meeting or with the entire staff. Talking together is always helpful, especially if the staff considers questions such as the following: • How comfortable were you with the tasks that have been delegated to you?

• Did you trade and/or negotiate any task responsibilities?

• What have you learned about the tasks you were assigned?

• How can you use what you have learned in the future?

• When you consider the duties you were assigned, what would you like to have done differently that would have added more impact to the publication and would have been more helpful to rest of the staff?

visionary “Without a vision there can be no

victory.”

The most successful advisers are those who have a clear vision of what they want to happen on an effective student publication. Rather than having a well-defined view of how everything should turn out, they learn to assist students to develop plans for turning possibilities into realities.

The vision expands with these personal abilities: • Ability to communicate, which means knowing how to deal with people.

• Open-mindedness, which in­­ cludes recognizing that all students’ ideas have value as well as setting a good example by admitting mistakes.

• Geniality, essential for interacting with students in a non-classroom setting (coaching-style) — a strategy that requires talking and listening to them one-on-one.

• Inclusiveness that promotes nurturing talents to enable students to feel they are “a part of” not “a part from” the organization and that results in more satisfaction with assignments and with accomplishments.

Effective advisers become “coaches” who encourage “players/journalists” to solve problems them-

Communication: Journalism Education Today • 23

“Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.” selves and who recognize students’ efforts and success. Advisers must offer more than an end-of-the-year “extrinsic” recognition. They must make sure each student feels his or her efforts are appreciated. It only takes a minute or two during a meeting to praise the efforts of student leaders or departments for their efforts. Also, advisers employ critique processes that elicit positive reinforcement of success by peers.

Something as simple as having them stand up and be recognized at a meeting or an assembly provides a more important “intrinsic reward” than a pin or certificate, which is often lost soon after the awards night.

Simply pulling an editor aside and telling the individual how “proud” you are of him or her — something not one of us hears often enough — can go a long way toward improving the level of performance of that person and the entire staff.

Teach and model “leadership” by encouraging weak performers. When a member of staff is not performing acceptably, there is a solution: Challenge the student who is falling short by citing positive potential and practical ways to progress. Share the vision enthusiastically every day and with every level of your staff, from novices to managing editors.

Uplift the talents with simple common sense: • Meet with the student, and define the performance standard.

• Focus on production and journalistic discipline, not on personality. Create a plan for improving the performance, and suggest steps that will need to be taken.

Performance can be any behavior.

For instance, it could include getting along better with other journalists, from the business staff to the photographers/graphic artists, as well as reporting and writing.

An adviser is an event planner.

The yearbook is a yearly event that takes a year of organizing, promoting and delegating to produce a quality product or event.

Newspaper advising is similar with a more limited time frame to accomplish the same goals.

Lynn Lowey Ridgewood Preparatory School (Metairie, La.) lldesign1@aol.com

24 • Communication: Journalism Education Today

• Allow sufficient time for changes in behavior.

• If necessary, meet with the student again to review progress. If performance does not improve, discuss other options.

• Solicit input from editors who know the student or situation.

For legal liability purposes, keep memos on the situation as you would any other form of classroom discipline. If nothing else works, ask the student to evaluate his or her publication goals.

Challenge each individual to think about becoming an idealistic journalist.

innovator “Because we’ve always done it this

way.”

The all-too-familiar quote may be the weakest rationalization or lamest excuse for maintaining or continuing a custom or tradition on your publication.

But face reality: Change is scary.

We all dislike that feeling of not being in control, and often we find trying something “new and different” quite risky. True, we might fail, but without the attempt or willingness to change, haven’t we really failed in our role as advisers? If anyone should not be afraid of change, it should be advisers.

Otherwise, student leaders become apathetic and too willing to live with the “status quo.”

On yearbook staffs, there are dozens or hundreds of ways to organize the content. On newspapers, editors could change the departments to fit the talents of the staff. Or devote more pages to opinions or to features. Or perhaps editors could plan monthly supplements to have a paper within a paper as metropolitan publications do. And magazines can make more radical changes from year to year because each edition requires a distinctive design or motif

as happens for professional periodicals. If imagination is alive, then the possibilities are unending.

You may think the sign of a good adviser is to have a journalism lab where every student is busy working on assigned tasks. But if student reporters and editors are merely “doing their jobs,” they are only working at about half their potential.

A truly productive publication staff is one in which every editor, reporter, photographer, graphic artist and business leader is actively thinking about better, more efficient methods of making the school a vibrant place to be from 7:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. and beyond every day. To elicit this kind of innovation from student leaders, advisers must model it by being open to new ideas. What’s more, they must daily encourage students to come up with new ideas.

A suggestion box is a time-tested method. And when editors listen to new ideas, they must be openminded. They should avoid shooting down a suggestion before they have heard it in full. Many of us are too quick, too eager, to show off our own experience and knowledge. We blurt out that something won’t work because “we’ve tried it before” or “we don’t do it that way.”

Well, maybe someone did try it before, but that doesn’t mean it won’t work now. And having done things a certain way in the past does not necessarily mean past leaders were performing the historical methods the best way. A good adviser is open-minded and receptive to new ideas — an idea that is so simple to say but so difficult to practice.

sustainer “Hey, how about those Spartans?”

Students selected randomly in the hallway and asked how their favorite sports team is doing can probably Fall 2005

“What is a weed?

A plant whose virtues have not been discovered.” tell you. Ask another how the high school’s football team did this past season. But ask the same student at the end of the school year, “What was the Student Council’s record this year?” They may not have a clue what you were talking about.

Student leaders cannot imagine equating a sports team’s winloss record with that of Student Council even though publications write about all activities, whether athletic or academic or social. As an adviser, you do not have to get complicated when teaching students leaders about rating or evaluating their relative success as editors or managers — in communication. You can simply stress success by stressing success simply.

Do that by sustaining their efforts to think and to write about every activity and every accomplishment in the school community, both for individuals and for groups. Help the staff see the big picture and the longterm effect.

empowerer “I can’t understand you because

you’re not listening to me.”

If you truly want to be an effective adviser, then you need to be concerned not only with each student’s “job” as a student and as a contributing member of your staff but also with his or her life outside school.

Students must know that while you believe their school work and their journalism work are important, you feel they are important as individuals too. The single best method for building any relationship is to establish an atmosphere of trust and bridge the relationship.

Gaps often exist in any type of business, institution, organization, group or family because individuals fail to share and to empathize with other persons. Usually, and perhaps most especially as teachers, we seek Fall 2005

My job seems to be part teacher, part mentor, part friend and stress reliever (we have a lot of fun in our lab), and part behind kicker.

During any given class period I can change roles multiple times — depending on who I am working with and what we are working on. I have to say that my favorite role is friend. I still have a connection to students I had as long ago as eight years. Each year when I start teaching again, I tend to look on all my students as potential future friends.

Mary Tedrow Millbrook High School (Winchester, Va.) mary.tedrow@verizon.net

to make students understand what we’re trying to teach them. We want to be understood first.

Think about this: Most teachers are either speaking or preparing to speak. We spend precious little time listening to our students, especially to understand them. Oh, we listen.

But usually only with the intent to reply. We get lost in the need to be “right” because we’re supposed to know all the answers. In our relationships with students, we assume that we are the ones who are supposed to be understood. If we spent more time listening, with empathy, we actually would find that we would have more accurate data to interpret and thus give more appropriate, accurate responses.

Good advisers must encourage empowerment in their classrooms and publications if they want their students to be productive risk-takers. Create a classroom and staff work environment in which students trust you and one another and communicate openly. Let them see, by your own example, that creative risk-taking is not only encouraged but openly supported.

When the staff is working long hours, always help them think of solutions. If a student appears to feel powerless, let the individual see how you, too, are powerless at times. Only when the power differences between teacher/adviser and students are minimized can the two support and empower one another.

And believe me, though you may have never thought about it before, your students empower you as often as you empower them.

Give students a reason to band together, to help one another and to feel they are part of the same team. That feeling of cooperation and sense of belonging is the essence of true school spirit.

Advisers must show they are serious about empowering their stu-

dents by providing the most basic needs of the classroom or publication. Provide resources and equipment for your students so they will be free to concentrate on their “jobs” as journalists.

In addition to providing supplies and training, your students need to see that you use your time and energy to sharpen your professional skills and to find ways to progress in technology and in journalism. As they recognize you as a risk-taker yourself, they will also recognize that their teacher/adviser cares about them and their publication.

respecter “Hey! I don’t get no respect around

here.”

Command — do not demand — respect from your students. It is the unspoken rule you need for your journalism lab. Everyone must respect everyone else on the publication staff. All other rules you might have for your classroom are subsets of respect.

Respecting someone does not mean that we necessarily must hold the individual personally in high esteem. What it does mean is that we respect individuals according to their roles and their personal rights and privileges in the classroom.

As the adviser, you play the lead role in maintaining an atmosphere of respect. Your words and your attitudes establish a dynamic. As in writing, what you do shows rather than tells.

You cannot directly control the attitudes of every student on the staff. However, if you accept the fact that you are responsible, regardless, then you can focus on creating a desirable environment in the classroom and among the staff. n

Communication: Journalism Education Today • 25

pro-active to hurdle roadblocks Staff procedures and recruitment tips to help advisers help students

By Beth Fitts

Like students, advisers learn from one another, whether about academic trends, about technological updates or about pedagogical strategies. Like others, I have found practical tips an easy way to help staffs produce memorable publications. Many of the tips are helpful all year. The staff recruitment section, however, is especially useful for the spring semester.

And my favorite word of advice: Look for a new tip you can add to your list of successful ideas.

26 • Communication: Journalism Education Today

Fall 2005

“To be great is to be misunderstood.”

STAFF PROCEDURES 1. Announce deadlines far in advance.

Post them, and remind students the day before. Tell students what is required for each deadline so there will be no doubt about requirements.

For example, “On Friday’s deadline, all text should be placed on pages in the correct font, size and justification.

Headlines, by-lines and ads should be finished.”

2. Place a wall-sized calendar in a central area of the lab, and mark the deadlines clearly. Assign one student to keep the calendar updated — not you; you don’t have the time. The assistant editor or the assignment editor might be a good individual to complete the job.

3. When you develop the deadline schedule, build in sufficient time for rewriting and for designing pages.

Remind students that successful publications devote a lot of effort to rewriting and to consulting on ways to improve content and coverage. Keep a record of stories received on time as part of the documentation for grades, but also pay attention to careful work on rewrites and to additional reporting done in consultation with reporting-editor teams. Both you and your editors need to be aware of late-breaking stories, such as a sports event, a school board meeting or a community appearance, that could account for late copy for a publication that strives to be up-to-date. Strong publications never miss a publication date, but your support in guiding editors to plan the schedule has a major effect on that outcome.

4. Require ad contracts and ad information to be submitted to the business manager before page layout begins.

Also, page layout staff needs photographs early so they can determine design possibilities.

5. Expect editors to communicate with the staff. They should enthusiastically and clearly make announcements to Fall 2005

6.

7.

8.

9.

the class. Also, the editor in chief should call on other leaders (for example, business manager, design editor, photo editor, assignment editor) whenever possible. The process establishes a chain of command and will make your editors more responsible for the finished product.

Support your editors. Let them decide on as much as possible without your making the decision. Save your big say-so for the decisions that matter. Don’t extend deadlines for staff members. Make them go to the editor in charge of assignments. Direct everyone to the editors for permission and guidance. The process presumes that editors have been chosen wisely.

Your duty is to be specific when you explain responsibilities. Pledge your support, and expect the same support in return — an ideal that assumes traditional policies and a year-long deadline setup with printed dates. If change is necessary, ask the editors for practical suggestions that will lead to improvements.

Require staff members to critique each issue of the paper or each section of a magazine/yearbook (or as often as you publish). Let each student mark the paper individually — then let them discuss changes as you (or the editor if he/she can control the discussion) lead the evaluation. The interaction motivates staff members to strive for excellence and allows students to learn from the success and the oversights of others. Also, written critiques encourage individual reactions.

To add interest, conduct a contest.

For example, in any school you might list a student ID number or a parking decal number. If the student with this decal will come by the paper office, the individual will receive a cap, Tshirt, pizza coupon, etc. — whatever you or your students can get donated.

Study good papers, both scholastic and professional publications. Invite staff members do so too. For new staff

members, it’s a good idea if they have a good design to study — the pros and the cons. It’s hard to create a design when you don’t know how to do it yet.

Stress that you do not reproduce the layout of another paper or of another book or magazine. But you may learn about placement, focal points and special effects by evaluating publications that invite readership.

10. Subscribe to a local newspaper for your journalism lab. Prod students to go beyond the sports pages and to keep abreast of events, style and design that is instructive and stimulating for the staff. Also, provide current magazines as sources for ideas, especially for graphics and design. For an introductory journalism class, use the papers in a different way, possibly as “treasure hunts” for techniques or as a basis for current events quizzes.

11. Promote your paper. Announce publication awards to the school. Send news releases about awards to local papers.

13. Search for opportunities for advanced journalism students to submit work to local publications. Opportunities vary, but they may include sports reporting, feature columns or summer internships as well as working on shortterm TV projects or magazines. Some student staffs also set up a public relations “department” to send out news releases for the school or for the district. However, it is important for both an editor and the adviser to check all copy before it is released to outside publications.

STAFF RECRUITMENT 1. When making staff selections, encourage your senior editors to place priority on publications skills: writing clearly, concisely and colorfully; editing by correcting errors and improving word choices; working industriously to produce assignments on time; working enthusiastically and productively on publication teams. If you

Communication: Journalism Education Today • 27

“All life is an experiment.

The more experiments you make, the better.” build the tradition of strong publications, outgoing editors will automatically be aware of personnel needs.

2. Promote standards to help select a staff. Consider these possibilities: (1) A journalism GPA requirement and/or an overall GPA requirement, (2) a writing or photography sample and one other piece of work (ad, layout, etc.), (3) two teacher recommendations (one from an English teacher and one from another teacher an applicant has had the last two years.

3. Make appointments to visit English classes before students make their course selections for the upcoming year. Enlist junior and senior editors to be publication ambassadors to excite underclassmen, especially targeting ninth and 10th graders in English honors classes, to enroll in journalism courses. The editors should inform recruits about the rewards, the opportunities and the pay-offs. They should explain what makes publication and broadcast classes challenging, enjoyable and valuable.

4. Adopt a schedule that you follow each year. Allow sufficient time for staff applications as you will still be meeting rigid deadlines during these months.

Consider incorporating the following ideas, but adapt months per needs in your school:

An adviser is a journalism coach who teaches his or her team the rules of the game, practices the skills needed to be successful, celebrates victories, builds morale and character, encourages during slumps and cheers the team on to even bigger and better accomplishments.

Becky Finegan Lakeview High School (Battle Creek, Mich.) bfin0409@comcast.net

February Require staff members to submit written applications for all positions on next year’s staff. Encourage them to explore the jobs for which they may qualify and for jobs that will allow them to develop new skills.

Also, encourage them to talk to senior editors about their duties or to discuss possibilities. Keep the applications locked in a file.

28 • Communication: Journalism Education Today

March Have incoming editors observe what current editors do. Ask current editors to explain their jobs prior to those who are uncertain about the duties. At the end of the month announce who the editors for next year will be. Send written announcements to each staff member to announce the new position.

Often the announcements create tensions, especially when you have people vying for the same positions.

April Next year’s editors will serve as assistants this month. The current editors will still make all decisions but should train upcoming editors about how to perform essential tasks. For example, current editors will explain how to make page assignments and let the new editor assist in writing the assignments.

The “retiring” editors should check these before they go out and explain why they made changes.

May The upcoming editorial staff will take the leadership role to publish the last paper or to prepare for the next yearbook. The new editors will then be able to do everything from “scratch” with the benefit of experienced editors to help or to give advice. Retiring senior editors should have assignments as well as other responsibilities, such as a senior issue or supplement or a special yearbook or magazine duty.

ADDITIONAL HINTS 1. Praise students often. Show their work to others.

2. Require students to sign an attendance sheet when they enter the classroom. Print an alphabetized list of names.

Allow adequate space for signatures beside each name. The system allows students to begin

working on task immediately.

3. Take students places. If you can get a smaller local paper to give them hands-on training, it makes a great field trip. Also take them to awards competition. Adjust the trips to the size of your community or metropolitan area.

4. Celebrate birthdays — possibly each month after deadlines. Give birthday awards — the calm award, the encourager award, the Ms. Organized award, the Mr. Energizer award, etc.

5. Create staff shirts. Wear them on designated days, maybe on publication days. They love it if their names are on the shirts.

6. Plan enrichment activities for any extra weeks in the schedule.

Consider newspaper interviews with school decision-makers or media films that “teach” journalism standards.

7. Draft a journalist who has done a great job, such as on an article, ad, layout or photo, to be the motivational, “how-to” speaker for the next month in a planning session.

8. Ask two or three imaginative editors to design business cards and memo pads for all staff members. And you can arrange to have them run off in a school print shop or in another innovative way.

9. Involve parents. They may help by providing food during deadlines or by assisting with mailings to out-of-town subscribers — or in other productive ways.

10. Enjoy your job. We all know it is tough because the deadlines and the challenges keep coming. But students will absorb your ideals and optimism.n

Fall 2005